"For These 22 Skills, I Can't Go Above $57,000."
Does it seem like companies are just openly saying they have no intention of offering most people real money these days?
I hope by now we realize that “nobody wants to work anymore” was a white male conservative dog whistle, writ large.
There are industries where it is harder to keep people, absolutely. (Service comes to mind.) There are industries with skill deficiencies, including many trades, nursing, etc. But by and large, a lot of people do want to work, because they need to have money for the rest of their lives. Life is expensive, and seems to become increasingly more so by the day.
The actual problem seems to be on the hiring side, really. Employers were pissed about COVID free money (which really didn’t last that long, all-in) and WFH possibilities (which only impacted about 40% of labor, if that), and no one can hold a grievance like a world-building executive. This all spiraled into various other memes and ridiculous concepts like “Quiet Quitting,” “Quiet Cutting,” “Lazy Girl Jobs,” etc. I half-expected to see some guy plummet from an 86th-floor window in San Francisco screaming “avocado toast!” and for that to become national news. The moment that work assumptions finally broke us.
On the employer side, you have a lot of themes converging at once:
Automation is looming, and we cannot ignore that. While we are still within the narrative of “This will create more jobs than it replaces,” we absolutely don’t know that for sure. Executives love cost-containment plays, because their bonus structure is tied to those. If automation is being framed as cost containment “in the room,” then that’s what it will be seen as among the hoi polloi white-collar class.
We’ve had a run of “ghost jobs” in the last 4–5 years, where companies post fake jobs to either (a) see what the compensation level of the market is or (b) to showcase fake growth to potential investors. I’ve applied for dozens of these jobs over the years; recently a roofing company called me 12 mins before an interview — I was already in the parking lot — and told me the job was “not needed.” I think they just posted it to get some extra coin from an investor, in all likelihood. Fake jobs are more real than we think.
Months back, I had an interview with some HVAC company that wanted a marketing director. They had about 22 things they wanted this person to accomplish, including getting this small, regional HVAC provider national news attention. They “couldn’t go above $45,000.” The owner was driving a brand-new luxury SUV, parked right outside. At some point, if you want a lot of skills (and yes, I am not even sure I have those skills), you need to pay for them. If you scroll Indeed job postings for even 10 minutes, you readily realize people don’t want to pay for them, or want to frame the job as commission, if anything.
I talked to a woman the other day who manages sales, marketing, and events at a local country club. It’s not big money, but it’s still a country club. She said it is hard to hire, but she has also realized over the years that she doesn’t need as many people as she used to hire, especially with some self-service options for ordering lunch, etc, etc. She even admitted it’s less about “people not wanting to work” and more about companies not needing people as much.
There’s a great stat from years ago about how, when General Motors reached its market cap peak, it employed 875,000 people globally. When Google hit the same market cap, it employed 58,000 people globally. The difference between 875K and 58K goes a long way to explaining all the hand-wringing about the middle class.
So yes, some people are lazy and entitled. Some people don’t want to work. But that’s a very small percentage of people, especially as milk and cod and cheese and dog food all become more expensive by the week. I think the other side of the equation is worth exploring: maybe companies really don’t want to hire, and long for a world where SaaS and automated prompts do most of the busy work that has long-defined so-called “good” or “respectable” jobs.
Your take?